Posts by Foyle

was any attempt made to measure the air temperature underneath the reactor as it was preheated by passing through the frame underneath? This would increase its temperature and lower its density making the simple free-tube convection heat transfer estimates rather higher than reality.

In fig 12b the wire external to the left end of the reactor is visibly brighter than the wire lines in the reactor (or brightest surface areas of reactor), hence hotter. So given that inconel cannot survive temperatures greater than about 1300-1350°C and higher temperature refractory metal wires cannot survive exposure to air, does that not imply that the reactor surface is <<1400°C and that the thermography is therefore grossly exaggerating the reactor surface temperature for some reason?

The wire within the insulated environment of the reactor is necessarily hotter than outside, and some suggest that may be possibly by using a refractory wire, are you aware of any method that might make it possible to bond an inconel wire within this insulated oxygen free environment to a refractory wire that is above its melting temperature?

What temperature then would the reactor surface need to be in order for the 900W output of the wires inside the reactor to not raise these wires above the melting point of inconel as necessitated by their being either made of inconel or bonded to the inconel wires?

Why were no readings from the control system thermocouple published?

Were the heater wires within the reactor embedded in ceramic, or wound around an inner core tube containing the fuel, this has major implications as to the heat transfer from the wires being radiative or conductive and may indicate whether or not there was a possibility of large errors in calculated power outputs.

Some commentary on transmittance (again from vortexL)
http://www.eurotherm2008.tue.n…apers/Radiation/RAD_6.pdf
fig 6 has alumina transmittance at 1050K.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2…article/ncomms3630-f4.jpg
black-body radiation for 1400°C

Assume that the finned tube is at 1000°C and the wires+reactor core are at 1350°C so that the wires don't melt - (little or no lenr heat possible without melting wires). The blackbody radiation of the wires + reactor core is nearly 5x as intense as powerful as from the finned tube, so even with only 10% transmittance about 1/3rd of radiant emissions from finned body could be due to hot wires+reactor core behind it.

Worryingly the transmittance drops off at longer wavelengths so the power transmitted will be mostly at shorter wavelengths and will thus naturally skew the resulting spectrum to look like a hotter black body than it actually is, the camera will be seeing what looks like a much hotter surface and will therefore (I assume) produce serious over-reading in thermographically determined temperature.

The system is way too complex for simple thermography to be able to deal with.

(copied from vortexL)
Inconel metal resistance wires can only survive a maximum of about 1350°C without melting (actually probably lower than that over a month long period), so we know the temperature is actually well below the 1400°C that the thermography reported.

Appears that there was an inner reactor vessel wrapped with helical resistance wires (hence shadows) from size of wires and necessary wall thicknesses this inner vessel is likely around 12-14mm diameter. Given high temperature most likely Alumina as was the outer finned tube. Assuming inner ID of outer finned tube is Ø18mm and 200mm long get area of .0113m²

From photo 12a/12b the wires appear to be about 2mm diameter wound helically around inner reactor core, but covering less than half of the core reactor vessel, giving them an area of (estimate) .005m² (this is only a guess) We know that they dissipate 900W of electricity, probably predominantly through radiation to outer fined tube, and slightly by conduction to inner tube. Inconel has emissivity of around 0.7.

In order for finned tube inner wall to absorb 900W from the wires at a maximum of 1350°C via radiative heat transfer the finned tube could be a maximum of around 1000°C. At that temperature the finned tube would also transfer approximately 800-1000W to the external environment via radiation and convection.

That leaves no room for any heat being evolved from LENR reaction at all - without melting the inconel resistance wires.

If the inner reactor was any hotter or adding any heat to the system then it would necessarily increase the finned tube wall temperature to increase dissipation to environment, that would in turn increase the wire temperature greatly, including a further bump from the radiative heat transfer from reactor to resistance wires, increasing their temperature to far above the point of failure.

These numbers are only approximate (this is a crude calculation only) as we are lacking a lot of constructional detail, but I think that quantitatively at least it appears that there is a strong possibility that this demo was producing little if any power, based on pretty simple physical constraints. And most certainly not the 3.8 COP claimed.

As to the explanation for the high temp readings - I suspect the IR camera was picking up the colour of the resistance wires and inner reactor vessel body through the partially transparent alumina to give an artificially high temperature reading.